Stryker Brigade combat teams are playing a key role in Iraq. In
the long term, they also are proving to be pivotal in the Army’s
transformation, said officials at Fort Lewis, Wash., where the initial
two brigades were formed.
“We
have learned so much from this organization that we are able to
accelerate into modularity much faster than we thought,” said
Lt. Gen. James Dubik, commanding general of I Corps and Fort Lewis.
In part because of the success of the first two Stryker brigades
in Iraq, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, has initiated
a force-wide restructuring to make the Army more modular, including
the Stryker brigades, which can be deployed quickly.
Schoomaker is calling these modular combat forces “units
of action.”
“These are units that can be employed to do anything from
humanitarian assistance, to engineering projects, to multiple fire
support, to combined arms brigades,” said Dubik.
Many of those tasks have fallen into the hands of the Stryker brigades
in Iraq. Because of the brigade’s infantry-centric structure
and the organic units that have been incorporated into its force,
Stryker soldiers have been able to excel at multiple missions in
Iraq.
“It’s the soldiers in the back of those vehicles that
really make the difference. Because they’re the ones that
get on the ground and physically interact, both positively with
the civilian populous and also hunt down and destroy the enemy,”
said Maj. Nicholas Mullen, rear-detachment commander of 1st Brigade,
25th Infantry Division, also known as the second Stryker Brigade.
“That’s one of the keys to a Stryker brigade. And kind
of how it is transforming the Army, is saying, ‘you can have
tanks and you can have Bradleys and all sorts of weapons systems,
but it’s really that soldier that’s going to make the
difference in these type of conflicts and the conflicts that we
see in the future.’ ”
Schoomaker also said that he needs more total brigades, noted Col.
Michael Peppers, director of the G37 division at Ft. Lewis that
is responsible for training, readiness, force management, strategic
change, and initiatives and analysis.
“An Army of 33 active component brigades, with roughly 22
Guard brigades, is not going to keep up with our changed strategic
condition, our reality in Afghanistan, our emerging reality in Iraq.
We need to get out of the old format and into the new format of
a modular force faster,” he said.
In January 2004, the Defense Department approved an increase in
the number of brigade combat team units of action from 33 to 43
by the year 2007.
There are three designs for these units of action: infantry, heavy
and Stryker. The infantry and heavy units of action will have two
maneuver battalions while the Stryker will continue to have three.
They will also have an armed reconnaissance, surveillance and target
acquisition squadron, a fires battalion, a support battalion and
a brigade troops battalion.
“One of the problems we have today in Strykers is that they
have four to five separate little companies with no battalion commander
over them. It frays a little bit of the leadership of the brigade
because they have to go watch out for those companies,” said
Peppers. Because of that, the Army created a brigade troops battalion
for the units of action.
By restructuring the organization of the Army now, it will facilitate
the transition into the future combat force.
“We’re moving into that organizational design now,”
said Peppers. “When technology gives us a future combat system,
we already will be in that format so the changeover will be like
it was in the 1980s, where it was principally an equipment swap-out.”
The Army has a long history of transforming, of changing its doctrine,
its structure and its tactics, said Dubik. The transformation of
the Stryker brigades began the Army’s largest restructuring
since World War II.
In 1990, “it was apparent to senior leaders of the Army that
the end of the Cold War, the end of Communism, the fall of the Berlin
Wall, was a huge strategic shift,” said Dubik. “It was
absolutely apparent that information technology would change the
tools with which war would be fought.”
Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the Army’s chief of staff at the time,
was searching for a different kind of force, one that did not yet
exist, said Peppers.
“What we had was something that was very strategically responsive
in the light forces, but didn’t possess a lot of lethality
and survivability,” he said. The heavy forces were at the
opposite end of the equation. “So we were looking for a medium
force,” he said.
The Army began experimenting in the virtual world through an entity
called “Louisiana Maneuvers,” said Dubik.
“That was an effort to get the Army’s head into the
new problem sets of the 21st century,” said Peppers.
Then it conducted a set of war-fighting experiments in the mid
1990s using a light brigade from Fort Drum, N.Y., at the National
Training Center at Fort Erwin, Calif., and a heavy brigade from
Fort Hood, Tex., at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort
Polk, La.
“There were opportunities for many concepts, ideas and schoolhouse
thought processes that could get in that experiment set and get
outcomes,” said Peppers.
At that point, the U.S. also was dealing with Kosovo and the struggle
to move forces rapidly into Albania and up to the border to put
pressure on the Serbians, said Peppers.
The chief of staff of the Army at that time, Gen. Erik Shinseki,
“came in and said, ‘enough, we’re going to do
this, and when we do it, we’re not going to experiment. We’re
literally going to start this thing, and then that brigade is going
to be an existing Army force, and it’s going to go do Army
work and deployments, and it’s going to do it on a very tight
schedule,’ ” said Peppers.
In October 1999, Shinseki announced the transformation of the first
two Stryker Brigades, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division—a
heavy brigade—and the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division—a
light brigade—both part of I Corps at Fort Lewis.
“Boy, was that controversial,” said Peppers. “Some
people look back and say, ‘oh, we should’ve had the
light brigade go first,’ because everyone would’ve said,
‘that’s a value added. You’re increasing your
capability instead of taking down.’”
“On the other hand, if you really wanted to get all the cards
on the table and get the cultural change of transformation started
and the large Army discussion about that, that was the braver call,”
he said.
Dubik pointed out these first two Stryker Brigades were formed
with three purposes in mind: to learn about the operational capability
of such a force, to spur thought about moving toward a future combat
force, and to create a function of change within the Army.
“If we create six of these Stryker Brigades, this will force
all the systems to change,” said Dubik.
To help in the transformation process, the Army provided a team
of experts and senior officials who were on hand to deal with issues
that arose.
“Fort Lewis got this infusion of institutional Army, not
distance help, not checks-in-the-mail help, but living here and
having to figure out the hard questions,” said Peppers. “Ultimately,
we wanted this brigade to have what we call strategic mobility,
to be able to get out the door.” In November 2000, the Army
put in orders for the Stryker vehicle through General Dynamic Land
Systems.
Critics quickly jumped on the Army for opting for a new vehicle
rather than using an existing platform. “The critics were
saying, ‘I could’ve given you a 113 yesterday. Why are
you waiting?’ ” said Peppers.
“If we had taken the old carrier, M-113, it would’ve
been cheaper, no doubt about it. But we wouldn’t have been
able to change the logistics system,” said Dubik.
The first Stryker rolled off the assembly line and into the hands
of the first Stryker Brigade in June 2002.
“No one thought we’d be able to do that,” said
Dubik. “It took us from 1990 to 1999 to do the conceptual
and experimental work necessary to get to Strykers. That’s
about 10 years worth of thinking. So when we needed Stryker, we
had already done the deep thinking, and we fielded it quickly.”
The first Stryker Brigade, the 3/2, had been training upon surrogate
vehicles, LAV IIIs, borrowed from Canada. Once the Strykers landed
in their hands, training took off, said Peppers. The 3/2 went through
back-to-back training exercises at Fort Erwin and Fort Polk, La.,
and demonstrated the capabilities of the brigade and the Strykers.
“As June 2003 comes, we’ve had good success with the
first one of these, in fact, so good that we’re already working
our way through the final reports to DOD and Congress so that there
can be a waiver for it to go up and be a part of the force in Iraq,”
said Peppers.
The 3/2 deployed to Iraq in November 2003 and was replaced by the
1/25 last fall.
“They’re working out exactly as we intended. They’re
providing an operational capability that surpassed our expectations,”
said Dubik.
“I think transformation was a huge success. Not just the
idea of the Stryker Brigade, but the way the institutional Army
came together to go about it. The way Fort Lewis supported the whole
process and really put some intellectual energy behind it. We’ve
proven that it’s possible to transform the Army while you’re
at war and that’s one remarkable achievement,” said
Huggins.
But he added, “Our role in transformation is still not over.
The Stryker brigades continue to evolve. Stryker brigades four,
five and six will look different than one, two and three. And changes
that they make will backfill into us.”